Heathrow Terminal 5

Abstract

The Heathrow terminal 5 (T5) project was created with the intent of easing the congestion of the airport, centralizing all British Airways flights, and increasing the revenue from other airlines. Due to the size of the project both in size and budget it was complex to manage, this was not ameliorated by the fact that it took eight years to get government approval. The project consisted of a control tower, two satellite buildings, and supporting infrastructure. The latter included river diversions, connections between terminals, and a train station. This resulted in 16 major projects, and 147 sub-projects, all separate from each other and involving over 60 contractors in total. Due to the fact that construction projects by nature are prone to delays it’s quite remarkable that Terminal 5 was completed on time, within budget, and with less fatalities than expected. The reason for this was the fact that the contracts between British Airways and the contractors were quite unique for at time. The contracts were unique because all contractors pooled together risk payments and were promised a share in the event that their work was finished on time. This proved to be an effective incentive not only to be on time and on budget, but also to nudge the contractors towards better teamwork as the prospects of getting the bonuses was higher than way. The result was a construction project finished on time and on budget with fewer fatalities than there would normally be on a project of that size. Unfortunately there were issues on the operation level that led to bad reviews on the opening week that overshadowed the success of the construction project.

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